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I can't remember reading Perfume. All i can remember is how much i didn't enjoy it. I firmly believe this was because i saw the film before reading its origins. A rookie mistake, as i spent the entire novel contrasting and comparing. It was horribly distracting, so much so that i've avoided both the film and the novel for over a year now, so i can give the book another go. Here's hoping.
And since then i've promised myself i wouldn't watch another adaptation before reading the book.
So far, so good.

Let The Right One In and Into The Wild.
Two films i'd been dying to see. I made myself wait however, until i fulfilled my promise of reading the originals. Neither disappointed.
Let The Right One In has to be one of the most beautiful films i have ever seen. I don't like using the word beautiful, it gets overused and used badly, but in LTROI's case, it's the only word possible. Not what you would expect to be used to describe a vampire film but it is for one about friendship and longing, which is what LTROI is really about. John Ajvide Lindqvist managed to elevate the typical vampire character to a softer, gentler place without robbing the mythic creature of its status in the monster hierarchy. A clever man.
The novel is far more grotesque but again, quietly beautiful. There are things in the novel that especially in today's society would mark it as being abhorrent and the film as a result, i believe, would have been dismissed out of hand, had such things been included - slightly cryptic but it's an important part of the story and i don't want to spoil potential readers. So i'm glad they were left out and the heart of the story was focused on.
All in all, the story is compelling and ridiculously layered with stories you just want to read more and more of as they meld into one. The actors are wonderful, especially the children - it's always amazing to watch someone so young, show the older actors how it's done. Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine, for example. I want to see Zombieland, yes i do.
I suggest watching and reading it, so my incoherent ramblings make slightly more sense.

On a bad note, lazy americans are remaking LTROI in english. Just read the subtitles for pete's sake!
This moment pretty much sums up Into The Wild for me. A boy so completely in love with nature and freedom, to the exclusion of all else at that moment in time.
I loved this book and i loved this film. I haven't been, 'moved', shall we say, by a film in such a long time, not since i watched Northfork a year or so ago. It's a hard film to watch because it sticks to the truth, embellishments and speculations were of course made because Chris McCandless wasn't there to tell his story himself and Jon Krakauer had to piece it together through the people he met and the journals and photographs he left behind. But i don't think it went off course or made too much of him. The film has been accused of glorifying a boy who they believed was foolish and cared for no one but himself.
I don't think they were paying close enough attention.
This man says it much better than i ever could.

Have you ever wanted to see something so beautiful it brought you to tears?
Well, i think he did, i think he saw something almost every day and i'm really quite jealous.

These were done whilst i was deciding whether to go back to uni or not. I think the mood i was in shows pretty well.
They do however show that drawing is my number one priority. I get asked a lot how i draw. How i actually physically and mentally manage to translate a real thing into a drawing and i've never been able to answer. I just can. It takes practice though. The development comes through that and then without even knowing why, or how it happened, you're suddenly a better draughtsman.
It's crazy really but a whole lot of fun when you surprise even yourself by how skilled you've gotten.
Idrawing basically.